Serious OB issue which kills my setup

Elektron Software Overbridge
#1

Dear Fellow Elekronauts. Please help me figure out how to solve this OB related issue

I am hearing very loud, random cracks from overbridge, the signal of which appears on my RME interface mixing software, Totalmix FX, going well into the red, but does not appear on Ableton Live (it is not visible on the OB track or the Master track). It might sound 5-10 times a minute or more.

Its always on the left channel of the output I select from the OB track. (be it the Analog Rytm or Analog Four).

It is independent of the transport status.

It does not appear when monitoring directly from the Analog Four or Rytm using headphones, or when I select the “built in output” of my Mac as a the Audio Output device.

It just started happening a few day ago, before it was fine. I cant recall anything I might have done to trigger it.

I have tried everything I can think of without success:
Rebooting
Re-installing my interfaces drivers and software
Re-installing Overbridge
Changing the projects bit rate
Changing the projects sample rate
Changing USB Cables
Using different a version of Ableton Live

This is very serious issue for me as my setup is worthless if I dont fix it…
So any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!.
Thanks :slight_smile:

PD: Im using Ableton Live 10.1.14 on MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6.

Questions re: using the Digitone as an audio interface, especially while using Overbridge
#2

Elektron recommends that Overbridge use the same buffer size as your audio interface. Knowing that the RMEs have incredible drivers and that you’re probably leveraging that to use a small buffer for super low latency, do you have Overbridge set at the same? Perhaps aligning these two buffers somewhere that is low latency and agreeable for Overbridge is a good place to start.

Check that out first. It’s in the Overbridge Control Panel

1 Like
#3

Honestly I pretty much gave up on overbridge. Don’t get me wrong it works well enough but getting everything set up, creating an aggregate device to use my audio interface, low input levels, can’t record compressor or effect on individual tracks. I had to do way too much post processing in ableton which defeated the purpose and actually took longer than recording one by one from main outs. I think they really created some cool software but it just does not work for me. It’s cool though the digitakt mk2 will have individual outs😀

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#4

You don’t need to do this. Overbridge doesn’t require that you use the device as the audio interface. That’s one of the beauties of it. I can use my DN and A4 in OB and still use my Steinberg UR44. This is in Windows. I’m certain the same is true on a Mac.

2 Likes
#5

Thanks for your insghts! I really appreciate it. Fortunately, the problem went away as mysteriously as it arrived. I did absolutely nothing and today it was fixed. A ghost in the shell!

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#6

Not trying to change your mind but you can make presets of track setups.

I setup all the tracks I need with everything routed how I want. Select all of the tracks and drag them into the user library (I have a folder called templates). When I want to use my AR for example, I just drag the preset into the session view and “wallahh “ all the tracks are there routed to the correct MIDI interfaces, audio channel inputs, etc…

3 Likes
#7

And here, I was just using the custom new project setup for this, but was kind of intimidating seeing 20+ tracks on project start! Didn’t realize this was something you could do. This is a great tip, thanks!

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#8

You can get individual tracks out as well? I can get the main outs to stream but only get the individual tracks if I set up aggregate device while using my clarett 8 pre.

#9

Nevermind Figured it out that was pretty easy lol. I still want higher volumes! Maybe I just like complaining… I won’t be happy until overbridge writes and records the song for me😀

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#10

I had a similar issue with hardware creating audible pops in my speakers and visible spikes in the mixer channel even when not in use/powered off. I thought the hardware was faulty but after several tests it turned out the audio cable was the culprit. Cheap cables with bad isolation can turn into a small nightmare especially when you don’t think of it as a possible problem since you get the audio signal as expected. Lesson learned in my case.

#11

If you’re in Ableton, just drop a Utility on the track to attenuate as desired. If you’re running your project in 24 bits you will have ass piles of headroom any way. As far as I understand you want your peaks around -12dB when tracking into a DAW. I used to think you were supposed to get as close to 0dB as possible without clipping but I’ve learned this is absolutely not the case in the digital realm. I believe Sound on Sound had a great article detailing all of this.

Happy your sorted it out though! I avoided it for so long because I thought I had to aggregate devices.